The owners of this caravan park are Dutch so that took care of Ray for the morning.

The sky was blue so we decided to stay another night and perhaps do some of the advertised walks. 
There is no reception for Internet or phones in the park so we knew we had to head back into Monto in the morning to let someone know where we were. I have a fear that something will happen at home and we won’t be contactable. We had also run out of wine and I had a couple of blog posts to upload, so a trip into town was inevitable. 

Far from being a ‘quick’ trip it turned into quite an outing. The old towns are so interesting to walk through and looking at the diversity that the businesses have had to show in order to survive in tough economic climates. As we were once small business owners we can easily sympathise with them. It’s tough. We saw a fabric shop which also sold confectionary and local crafts, an op shop that was the tourist information centre and place for locals to buy their pest control (for cattle grazing) and Ray even commented on the fish fillets you could buy at the hairdresser until he saw that the butcher was next door and their sandwich board was just verging on being outside their neighbours, the hairdresser. Buying fish fillets at the hairdresser WAS just taking it a little too far!

We returned to the caravan intending to have lunch and then do one of the walks. We got talking over lunch to our neighbours and then got held up on the way back from the toilets talking to other campers. All in all this meant that it was after 3pm by the time we were ready to set off. The sun sets suddenly so we knew we wouldn’t be walking very far. We drove to the Cania Dam and the boys skimmed rocks across the water while I took advantage of the unexpected Telstra service on the phone.

After taking a good look around we went back to the van, our intended walk forgotten. Ray stoked up the fire of the community firepit and we toasted marshmallows. Caleb just loves the fire and so we decided dinner would be had around it. I made spaghetti bolognaise which the boys ate around the fire in the dark. I decided to eat mine in the van in front of the TV with a blanket and a glass of wine. I was much more comfortable than them!